Ent 1.02

Its 1 unit vs 1 unit.

Lum was never upgraded in both test.

This has to be a bug. Frontal damage for lum should be around 8 only, with sides do 4 each. 50% frontal/ 25% each side.

There is something goofy going on.  Does the illum fire slower, but with more damage each shot?  I ask because the shield mitigation on the illum was always very high, usually 57% while the mitiation of the assail varied between 17%-26% the whole time.  That's why the assail lost.  I agree, an non-upgrade illum (weapons) should not beat a fully upgraded assail (weapons).

Someone please verify my test first before I test other conditions

Someone verify the test first before I try other test

Wow nice find JJ.

Now we can all say that Advent is definately not OPed.

Let'S be honest here. From day 1 of sins advent has been IC'S sweet heart.

I had 2 repair platforms with 2 missle bays and 20 assliants, I had a guy roll me by simply moving his illums constantly in a figure eight pattern around these guys, didnt even kill one illum since my assliants had to constantly turn around to fire while the Illums just blasted away with the sidebeams!

Looking into it for the next patch.

really if it was a real battle the assilents would also have upgraded armour.

As much as illums are better than all other lrfs i really think that they dont need a nerf. The problem is fighters dont counter them well enough anymore so the only counter is more lrfs  scouts, or going straight for HCs, which is expensive.

really what needs to be nerfed is repulsion. and carriers need to be buffed, then there wont be as much as a balance problem.

Voice of reason.  A one on one scenario is hardly representative of a real battle.  In reality, the space egg is firing off another shot of nanos every 12 seconds, which is an assured kill of another illuminator.   If nanos takes a (much needed) nerf then we can talk about the assailant not stacking up to the illuminator, but as it is right now the Vasari have a considerable edge on Advent with that ability.

Honestly, one of the problems here may be that LRF are too important to everyone's overall strategy right now, so the faction with the strongest LRF has a decisive advantage in that sense.  How often do you see comparisons of each race's light frigate?

Interestig test.  I always assumed the superiority was because some of the sidebeams were managing to fire forward by having the target barely be in their arc.  I've played enouch Illuminator vs Assailant fights to know how much more devastating the Illuminator is, but didn't know the exact mechanic.   Slower shot cycling would make sense, because the Illuminators and those sidebeams would, ON AVERAGE, be shooting lower mitigation targets more often, while Assailants using focus firing would be at high mitigation more often.  Over time, it could account for the disparity we see between the effectiveness of Illuminators and the effectiveness of the other races LRM's.

Since everyone is making replays and Blair is looking into it, someone shoot demonstrate the Illuminator figure 8 tactic against equal cost and cap supply of Assailants or LRM.  I have been telling people forever that Illums had a huge advantage with their "fire on the move" tactics.

I'm throwing in my two cents.

There's something key here. The Assailant naturally kills quicker than an Illum one on one. What you're seeing imo is the effects of shield mitigation. The Assailant is undoutably doing more damage because ALL of it's damage is in the phase missile. The Illuminator is doing less damage because only roughly 60% of the damage is in the front beam, so the shield mitigation won't go up as fast, meaning less of the beam's damage is negated.

The phase missile's damage is negated because it does more damage than the beam which makes the mitigation climb like crazy. Since the higher rate of damage doesn't stop, the mitigation actually goes up to 57% negated.

So an unupgraded Assailant does 13 dps - 57% = 5.6 dps.

An Illum does roughly 10 dps with the front beam and only goes through 15-25% shield mitigation as mentioned by Howthe. That makes the Illum do on average 8 dps-ish.

If I recall the Illum has more health and shields than an Assailant?

I'm not surprised that the Illum won in both cases. 

Ok, for fully upped phase missiles, I think you're seeing the same thing. It makes sense that it would be closer, but the fact is Assailants are Tier One. The tradeoff with them is that you get them earlier in exchange for the worst STARTING long range frigate. I believe Assailants are the best LRF fully upgraded. If you don't, ask the Vasari player who can knock out ur level 10 cap and fully upped in health and armor Starbase with ease.

Also, it's worth noting that the Assailant is going to be the most frail LRF of the three b/c of the Tier one accessibility. The tradeoff is you get them early and can upgrade them as much as you like. Vasari Armor absolutely rocks (Get up to Tier 4 and you up by 4 armor, VERY POWERFUL)

The Illum still needs to be toned down a little BUT ONLY A LITTLE. I'd like to see them get a reduction to 1 Armor and say ballpark -50 points in health and shields. Make them frail so they can't stand alone. They do their job. They're fleet destroyers. They just need to be less beefy so the damn counters don't have as hard a time as they do now.

Scouts fend off Illums easily early. In late game, HC's do it well enough. Repulse can make things extremely unfair, but that's a different problem in it's own. (For the love of pete make Repulse cost more antimatter, like 15-25 aps. That's fair. 8 Guardians would still be able to abuse it, but not forever like people do now)

I have to agree with Amish. his suggestion about the slight reduction to HP and balancing for repulse should work.

really the devs should look at this, there are some great suggestions that could even out the late game gap between races.